The Climate Crusaders

By Charles Alexander, Bryan Walsh/ Hong Kong, Rita Healy/ Denver, Alex Perry/ New Delhi, Eric Roston

THE POWER BROKER REWARDING GOOD BEHAVIOR

Fred Krupp wants to do something about the carbon dioxide that spews from tailpipes and smokestacks. But why is the president of Environmental Defense looking for solutions in tropical rain forests and Kansas cornfields? Because forests and fields pull greenhouse gases from the air. So Krupp, 52, went to Brazil to urge protection of the Amazon basin and to Kansas to promote no-till farming. Plowing fields releases CO2; if farmers plant seeds without tilling, three-quarters of a metric ton of carbon per acre could be stored every year.

What's in it for Brazilians and Kansans? Environmental Defense is lobbying Congress to approve a system that would mandate reductions in emissions and allow the sale of permits to release specified amounts of carbon. Companies having trouble cutting emissions could buy allowances from firms that have unused permits. Or they could pay farmers to store carbon and developing nations to preserve forests. The idea comes from a concept developed by Environmental Defense when Krupp helped draft the 1990 Clean Air Act. It set up a trading system to control sulfur dioxide. Krupp believes similar financial incentives could slow global warming. "Once you put a value on carbon reductions," he says, "you make winners out of innovators. You offer a pot of gold." --By Charles Alexander

THE ENERGY ENGINEER Clean Power For China

Like just about every ambitious engineering student at China's Tsinghua University in the early 1980s, Li Zheng had his heart set on the high-tech, high-profile electronics field--up until the day he bombed on an electronics exam. But his uncharacteristic classroom stumble led Li to a field that could play an even larger role in China's future: energy production. "I think the choice was a very fortunate one in the end," says Li, who studied thermal engineering and in 2000 became a full professor at Tsinghua--China's M.I.T.--at the remarkably young age of 35. "Energy is incredibly important for a growing society like China."

But energy means carbon, and China's booming economy puts it on a path to become the world's No. 1 greenhouse-gas emitter as early as 2020. Li knows that China needs clean energy as badly as the developed world needs China to clean up, which is why he joined the Tsinghua-BP Clean Energy Research and Education Center as director when it opened in July 2003. The center's most promising project is a new technology called polygeneration, by which coal is converted into a cleaner gaseous fuel that can both generate electricity and be processed into a petroleum substitute. Polygeneration could cut the carbon emissions China generates by burning its copious coal reserves and reduce its dependence on oil imports. While his team continues to refine the technology--it's still more expensive than direct coal combustion--Li is lobbying the government to construct a $600 million demonstration plant, and he's optimistic he will see it built. "China is motivated to develop this technology," Li says. And the rest of the world is hoping it does. --By Bryan Walsh/Hong Kong

THE SNOW MAN OF ASPEN KEEPING WINTER COOL

If the 1998 fires set in Vail, Colo., by protesters from Earth Liberation Front were an environmental wake-up call for the ski industry, Auden Schendler, 35, is a triple shot of espresso. Hired the next year by Aspen Skiing Co. (ASC), he has become the most visible of a crop of experts charged with cleaning up the industry's act. Between keeping the lodges toasty and draining the creeks for snowmaking, downhill-skiing companies in the late 1990s were major consumers of natural resources. And ASC, which now operates four mountains, two hotels and 12 restaurants in the Aspen-Snowmass area, was one of the biggest. Its snowmaking operations alone consume some 160 million gallons of water a year.

Schendler set about changing that. ASC had already invested $10.5 million in efficient snowmaking equipment that saved more than 6 million gallons of water in one year. At Schendler's urging, it became the first ski company to issue a climate-change policy, with a public commitment to cutting greenhouse gases that has led to a 75% reduction in emissions. ASC was the first to use biodiesel fuel in snowcats, issue sustainability reports and develop a green building policy.

A graduate of Bowdoin College, Schendler insulated trailers for the poor before joining Amory Lovins' famed Rocky Mountain Institute. He found a kindred spirit in ASC president and CEO Pat O'Donnell, although the road to environmental enlightenment at ASC hasn't always been smooth. It took four years to persuade the company to retrofit a parking garage with fluorescent light fixtures, a move Schendler calculates rid the atmosphere of 300,000 lbs. of CO2 annually.

A prolific writer and major supporter of the Keep Winter Cool campaign, a partnership between the ski industry and the Natural Resources Defense Council, Schendler feels he has helped change the culture of skiing, at least at ASC. "We've turned this place into a lab for addressing climate change," he says. "Aspen is a lever that can change the world." --By Rita Healy/Denver

THE POLLUTION FIGHTERS Delhi Without Diesel

Melting ice caps didn't figure into the fight Sunita Narain and Bhure Lal led to build the world's cleanest public-transport network. They had more pressing concerns. "New Delhi was choking to death," says Narain, 43, director of India's Center for Science and Environment. "Air pollution was taking one life per hour." Adds Lal, 63, then a senior government administrator: "The capital was one of the most polluted on earth. At the end of the day, your collar was black, and you had soot all over your face. Millions had bronchitis and asthma."

In the mid-1990s, Narain filed a lawsuit to force Delhi's buses, taxis and rickshaws to convert to cleaner-burning compressed natural gas (CNG). In July 1998, the Supreme Court ruled largely in her favor and adopted many of her proposals. It ordered a ban on leaded fuel, conversion of all diesel-powered buses to CNG and the scrapping of old diesel taxis and rickshaws. But busmakers and oil companies--supported by government ministers--objected loudly. So the court formed a committee, led by Lal and Narain, to enforce its judgment.

The unlikely duo immediately ran into roadblocks. Bus companies took vehicles off the road, stranding angry commuters. Mile-long queues of rickshaws formed at the handful of gas stations with CNG pumps. Oil companies trotted out scientists who claimed that CNG was just as polluting as diesel. But Narain and Lal fought back. By December 2002, the last diesel bus had left Delhi, and 10,000 taxis, 12,000 buses and 80,000 rickshaws were powered by CNG.

Although air pollution in Delhi has stabilized, the fight for clean air is far from won. Some 400 to 600 new private cars roll onto the city's streets every day. Narain and Lal don't claim to have slowed global warming. But their efforts have attracted requests for advice from as far away as Kenya and Indonesia. "Delhi leapfrogged," Narain says with a grin. "People noticed." --By Alex Perry/New Delhi

THE EVANGELICAL ACTIVIST PREACHING FOR THE PLANET

The Rev. Jim Ball agrees with President George W. Bush's positions on abstinence, stem-cell research, traditional marriage and the rights of an unborn child. But the Administration's environmental policies strike him as morally wrongheaded, and he's not afraid to say so. He led the 2002 "What Would Jesus Drive?" campaign against gas-guzzling cars and was one of the organizers of the Evangelical Climate Initiative in February, when 86 evangelical Christian leaders called on Congress to regulate carbon-dioxide emissions.

Ball, 44, practices what he preaches (he drives an energy-efficient Toyota Prius) and he came to his environmental beliefs honestly: through Scripture and concern for the living and the unborn. Fearing that millions of lives could be lost in global-warming-related disasters, he began studying environmentalism at Drew University in 1994 and emerged three years later with a Ph.D. in theological ethics. He became executive director of the Evangelical Environmental Network in 2000.

Activist ministers like Ball and Richard Cizik of the National Association of Evangelicals represent a significant political liability for the Bush Administration and its allies in Congress--a sign that their energy policies have put them on a collision course with a core constituency. Pay attention to our message, Ball argues, because climate change is not a left-wing, tree-hugging issue. "It's a people problem. It's about loving your neighbor." --By Eric Roston